It may look like a garage, but it’s much more than that. Where patients, visitors, and staff at the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa usually park their car is also a 2,000-bed fortified underground hospital in times of war, such as the one in which Israel now finds itself.
For the first time since its opening in 2014, the Sammy Ofer Fortified Underground Emergency Hospital was fully converted this week in case of an outbreak of hostilities with Hezbollah and other terrorist groups on Israel’s northern borders.
As the north’s only tertiary care hospital (providing care from certain specialists) and level-one trauma center, Rambam must be ready.
Shortly after the murderous assault and missile barrages on Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, which began on Saturday and have resulted so far in more than 1,300 dead Israelis and over 3,000 injured, the Health Ministry instructed Rambam’s leadership to put staff and IDF personnel into action to convert the 1,500-vehicle parking garage into a hospital.
The job took just 36 hours, and with the work complete, patients can be transferred from the aboveground wards as soon as the word is given by authorities. READ MORE
